by Sally Griffiths
Elen yanks up his pseudo-70s orange and cream duvet to cover her naked body. Concealing her custom-made, slightly sagging belly from all that Bacardi and Coke she drank as part of her education at Goldsmiths. Purposefully, she avoids covering up Mark. Leaving him bare because at this moment she doesn't give a shite about those goose bumps he gets so easily. What she normally calls his "iccle hairs" that regimentally rise up and down throughout each day and usually reassure her that she loves him fail to make up for the fight they have just had.
"Bastard", "bloody", "selfish" and "shite" are spinning round in Elen's mind, like bad 80s records clashing on a nightclub's decks. Snippets rush through her head of what they've achieved in only four months in Mark's, by now broken, minimalist-style bed. Initially, their nights together were a medley of oral, doggy, spoons and "whose turn is it to go on top?" missionary. Nice, friendly, get to know your partner icebreakers. Experimental, though, had led to extreme (at least in Mark's mind). His hand holding her leg right up there, and her hand clutching that little bit too close to Mark's asshole; as Elen was just reminded by their argument, he's a bit of a dick dick dick kind of a bedroom guy. Hence he is so self-assured that their sex is going from strength to strength, intense to intenser which (Elen had just pointed out mid- argument) was "not a fucking word, fool!"
"She's fucking sick. Gross. Obscene," thinks Mark. As he lies with his toned body increasingly goose bumped. Too annoyed to notice he's chilly and pull on his blue Ralph Lauren t-shirt that Elen had earlier yanked off him and slung on the floor. This is rare for Mark who spends most days taking his Ben Sherman sweaters on and off and on and off so that he's just the right temperature. He's obsessing. He keeps thinking: "Did she do that with her ex, Jake? Oh god no. He wouldn't. Would he? What kind of a guy would be willing to do that? But then Jake was an artist, and they do like 'to break down boundaries'?" Mark had overheard what his editors liked to get up to with their birds: it was fucking sick. In Mark's bedroom fantasies, there are certain things you just do not do with some holes. Maybe it is some guy's dream to be delving down where nature really hasn't designed for him to go, but Mark knows that's just fucked up. He's definitely not prepared to get his face right into Elen's shitty mess. Which it definitely is today because luckily the streaks had caught his eyes before she asked him to go burrowing around there. Hence he told her no. He's seen how horny Elen can get; she'd get so into it that there'd be blood everywhere. Being Elen, she wouldn't care if there were pain involved. She'd probably like that...
Elen continues her sulk shrouded in Mark's supposedly 70s duvet, thinking it's not like she asks for it every time they end up fidgeting in the master bedroom of his white Georgian townhouse. She only asks when she's truly gagging for it. And that's never more than once a month. And she'll always do what he wants: go down on him AND swallow that gone off Worcestershire sauce few millilitres that he produces every time they play. She's a generous lover. She'll lick around his balls until he groans for her to consume more. And like a nice, concurring partner, she'll go as if to swallow little-him whole before the in-out business of building his climax starts. Which goes on and on and on and on. Even with lockjaw, she'll still try to keep going. And yes, she acknowledges he can be caring by saying she really doesn't have to carry on if it hurts her jaw that much (which is one of the many reasons she loves him), but the important point here is that she still tries to please him. Even though she's a vegan, Elen doesn't mind swallowing Mark's vinaigrette-lookylikey gunk; Elen understands her partner's needs. Unlike him. She decides: "After all the positions and holes I've been willing to let him try, he still won't be fair and give me exactly what I want. What a narcissistic shit-head!"
Mark's starting to notice his goose bumps. And he's starting to panic because the last two times they had this very same argument, within minutes Elen had said sorry, put on her La Senza skimpy nightdress, and pulled him under the duvet to join in. Not this time though. "Is she gonna break up with me," he frets, "if I don't?" Elen's justifications, absurd as they are!!!, were getting harder for him to discredit. He accepts gratefully that Elen will suck his cock whenever. "And however!" As pointed out by Elen nine minutes ago when he was preoccupied with preparing his attempt to win the last line. And he appreciates her willingness, but sucking his cock and anal sex are just not comparable to what she claims she needs. It just isn't justification for him to have to go burrowing down with his tongue where waste has come out. Where waste is coming out. Which is fucking vile. And most women DO NOT want it. Mark should know. He's screwed more than his colleagues Dave, Rob and Joe's totals added together. But more than vile, it's dangerous: H.I.V. "Ha," Mark'd thought, the first time they had this argument, and he issued this defence. But in February, they'd been tested before continuing their fucking relationship and both were fine. So he couldn't use that argument against this act she wants him to perform. "Sodding fewer arguments available every month," Mark thinks as he continues to stare up at his neatly plastered high ceiling to avoid eye contact with Elen.
"Damn this," they mutter! "This is ridiculous. Such an overreaction. Why won't Elen / Mark just agree with me?" they think. Not quite in unison because they have only been together since the Christmas party at Mark's Advertising Production Company, and it is merely April now. But both have these thoughts somewhere between 10:47 and 10:49 this Friday night which again reinforces why their friends keep saying: "that pair are really meant to be." But Elen isn't quite so convinced. She's "horny" as Mark likes to label it. To contain it... And for crying out loud, it is her 23rd birthday. Isn't the birthday girl meant to get whatever the bloody hell she wants? The sexy (and predictable) gift of lingerie in shocking pink Elen's favourite colour were nice and all that and even matched the vest she'd been wearing that night with a pair of corduroy brown flares. But all she wants is for him to visit her there. Now. Not in two weeks when he can deal with it. But now. When her clit is crying out for him. When all she wants is to feel him in that position rubbing, caressing...
Suddenly, Mark figures out what Elen is up to. He recalls a conversation they'd had, on Tottenham Court Road, when they were waiting for the crew to start filming for a washing powder advert. They'd often spent many an hour chatting in between shots when they were out on location, hence they felt it was a fuck-your-friend rather than manager-of-company-seduced-by- or-seducing-his-new-just-graduated-runner scenario when they finally got into bed intoxicated on 20th December. She'd told him...when was it? Last June? Oh yeah, she'd announced that she liked to test boyfriends by requesting really dirty things that girls never get off their guys let alone have the guts to ask for, and at the time Mark had run his hands through his greying hair thinking how much this strong girl was making him get the horn. "So," Mark thinks to himself smugly in his bedroom, "that's what this is all about." Hence, her aural arguments about them being the same acts. Mark decides to play Elen's game. "Okay honey, I'll do it because it's your birthday, and I want to please you," he slyly offers.
Mark pretends he agrees with her (now he realises joking) defences such as "they are very similar: both cellular and non-cellular material and not particularly unhygienic". "Ignore what society's told you," Elen'd say again and again which, in this specific argument, he now saw as her making a clever move to mock the deconstruction she'd learnt at Goldsmiths. "There's nothing natural about you plunging your dick in and out my mouth. I mean...it's not as if its to make babies," Elen had declared. That's what Mark really liked about Elen; besides being blonde and pretty slim, she was smart and could see things that others couldn't. Hence, her weird fucking sexual fantasises. As he prepares to (pretend) to go where he is sure no man has licked before, Mark is smirking at her (absurd) pleas that had earlier repulsed him so. Her classic comment was, "Mathematically speaking, your 5 millilitres of spunk is far more than the 0.1 millilitres I'll release while you flit your tongue over, in and around my hole."
Elen's shocked by Mark's birthday surprise of accepting to visit her tract that is so very erogenous at this time of the month. But aware of how he might change his mind, she opens her legs and escorts Mark firmly down there into place. Elen begins to move his head in rhythm to what, after such a wait, she desperately needs, and she clamps her hands onto his head just as he does when she's sucking him off. Which is when Mark bloody well discovers that Elen wasn't joking. As her menstrual blood envelops his mouth, his stomach, his body, he starts to regurgitate tonight's candle-lit Mediterranean dinner. "For Christ's sake, Elen, I'm a vegan," Mark yells. As he flings himself from his bed!